


Like Life Itself

by HarpiaHarpyja



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Aftermath Trilogy References, Ben Solo Deserved Better, Ben and Rey get high on life, Blatant disregard for climate and biome science, Canon Compliant, Character Death Fix, F/M, First Time, Fluff, Force Bond (Star Wars), Force Dyad (Star Wars), It's What We All Deserve, Jakku, Light Angst, Naked Ben: It's What Rey Deserves, Non-Graphic Smut, POV Rey (Star Wars), Planetary Rebirth, Post-Canon Fix-It, Post-TRoS, Resurrection, Romantic Fluff
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-27
Updated: 2019-12-27
Packaged: 2021-02-18 08:15:01
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,499
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21991045
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/HarpiaHarpyja/pseuds/HarpiaHarpyja
Summary: A year after Exegol, Rey returns to Jakku to investigate a feeling she has been trying to ignore for months. Her journey leads her to the Plaintive Hand plateau, where something warm and bright as life waits deep beneath the crumbling ruins of an abandoned Empire observatory.
Relationships: Kylo Ren/Rey, Rey/Ben Solo, Rey/Ben Solo | Kylo Ren
Comments: 70
Kudos: 410
Collections: TROS Reylo Fix-it Fics





	Like Life Itself

**Author's Note:**

> Jumping on the fix-it train in the wake of TROS. Needless to say, this movie left me with a lot on my mind, and writing this was a big help over the past week. Hope this contribution to the fix-it fic onslaught is a welcome take to anyone working through their feelings. <3
> 
> You can find me on Twitter at thisgarbagepic1, on Tumblr at thisgarbagepicker, and on PF at diamondsapples.
> 
> Thanks for reading! (And thanks to inmyownidiom and rebelrebel for the beta!)

The call is too persistent to ignore any longer. As the  _ Wayfinder  _ judders out of hyperspace, Rey spies the familiar dust-colored sphere ahead and is filled with a shocking flood of relief. It is the last feeling she thought she would ever have when faced with the sight of Jakku (on the other hand, Finn’s look of bald surprise and his emphatically appalled “You’re going  _ back to Jakku? _ ” was worth a laugh), but its onset deepens her confidence that she’s doing something right rather than merely responding to a desperate sense of . . . well, she’s not sure how to define the way that call makes her feel. 

It is familiar and strange, painful and soothing, knowing and unknown. It started months after Exegol, strongest at night when she dreams. She hasn’t had such repetitive dreams in ages. Always the same expanses of sand, cold nights under a desert moon, or the sensation of someone beside her but just out of sight, a fuzzy shadow at the edge of a patch of blazing sunlight.

She’s managed to set it aside for nearly a year. At first, it wasn’t hard. One of her greatest talents has always been distracting herself, deferring and putting off the things that are hardest to face, and there was so much to do. The war didn’t end over Exegol. 

And there was so much to mourn: Ben, the life they could have had, the serenity she had seen and felt in him in the last stolen moments. That—the mourning—would hit her at times she didn’t expect and never when she was ready. It took practice to get over the fear of feeling it, again and again, until it resolved into gratitude and acceptance only sometimes tinged with a wanting she can never shake. 

So when she finished with deferring and doing and mourning, she left. She owed it to herself to see as much of the galaxy as possible, to become stronger and make the horizon as broad as she dared, to grow beyond what she had been, seen, and done. She owed it to them, too—but most of all to him. 

Tatooine first, and then beyond. Just herself, her ship, and a feeling that she’s never alone, she’ll never  _ be _ alone, even when she is.

The  _ Wayfinder _ sinks through Jakku’s atmosphere and begins its descent. Going back is not a concession. This is good. She is meant to come here again, just once. There’s something to find, and then she will go and never look back. 

Rey avoids the most memorable sights. She could guide her ship down near her old home in the  _ Hellhound Two _ , or whatever is left of it; she could let the landmarks of the Spike or the flapping tents of old Cratertown tempt her lower. But she does not set down until it feels right. She knows when it’s time—a warm thrum in her chest as she catches sight of a long, flat rise of land that reaches over a stretch of sinking sand. She hasn’t felt that sensation in so long, not like this. It’s the echo of a moment when her heart was so full and beating as one with his, and just like the first time, it’s gone too soon. She doesn’t know what she has come for, but her hopes surge with innate understanding that this is the place.

_ Be with me _ . 

The mantra is a force of habit to still the excited dance of nerves as she lands a safe distance from the edge and disembarks. She squints at what lies ahead, shields her eyes, and takes it in.

Plaintive Hand plateau and its observatory ruins is a place she always avoided when she still called Jakku home. She understands why now, but the lingering aura of dark power that hangs there no longer troubles her. She lets it feel her presence and senses the prickle of it in her consciousness. It wants to feed on the fear, hurt, and anger she spent so many years sublimating on this planet. She knows what that hunger is like. She still feels it now and then. For a moment, the temptation to let the starved remnants feast is a thin needle pushing deep inside her heart, poking at still-healing wounds, searching for a seam to pull them open. 

“Those are mine. There’s nothing for you,” she murmurs, almost weary, and the dark recedes to lurk elsewhere. She ducks into the  _ Wayfinder _ ’s cockpit for her bag and supplies.

This place has been abandoned to the elements since before she was born. The buildings are mostly collapsed, as if something exploded deep beneath the plateau and sucked half the wreckage back in on itself before its fury was quenched. The site was picked clean of worthwhile salvage many years ago, though she can’t help evaluating what she sees among the dust. It may be useless and forgotten, but it still tells a story. Something desperate and violent happened here. She hesitates a moment, crouches in the sand, and places her hand on a jagged edge she thinks must have been the panel of a control console. 

Her senses are swarmed with the chaos of a vision, broken and stuttering. It’s suffering, and consuming fire, and roaring wind, and so much fear, so much hateful devotion. It only lasts a few moments, but when she comes back to herself she is on her hands and knees, forehead dipped to the ground, chest heaving. No wonder she stayed away so long. Frankly, she doesn’t want to linger longer than she has to even now. Slowly she straightens up and releases the scrap metal, wiping her hand over her thigh before continuing into the heart of the shattered observatory. 

The call is strongest there. Just under the tattered shroud of darkness, it beats strong and bright, so luminous it’s barely hidden the closer she gets. At this point she hardly needs to walk—she is moved by it, body, soul, and mind. It pulls her in, and she follows willingly. She halts at the edge of a tunnel. It’s been dug deep into the sand, enough that she can’t see the bottom or sense its presence. It may very well reach to the center of the planet itself, a neglected space robbed of a once-dark purpose. The walls are lined with long panels of scorched, rusted metal. She can easily imagine herself climbing down, finding each hold, and rappelling to the end . . . except there doesn’t seem to be one.

Lifeline. 

That’s the word that comes to her. The only way to explain it that makes any sort of sense as she approaches: the thing that waits far below the surface of the planet, curled deep and unreachable at the core of the world. Not light, not dark. This is life itself, an essence that embraces both forces as one. Right now, it’s beckoning to her or something inside her that has been waiting quiet and steadfast for too long. 

She hesitates. She doesn’t know what to do next. The desert falls uncannily still for an instant. Then the sun beats at the slivers of exposed skin on her neck, arms, and face. Grains of sand whisper as they are lifted by the wind. Metal creaks in the afternoon heat. Somewhere nearby, a gnaw-jaw swarm howls past in search of warm blood. Beads of sweat rise beneath her layers of clothing as her heart speeds up in anticipation of something she has not yet perceived. 

Her awareness of the vitality and warmth in all this barren waste slips so smoothly into a memory of the planet itself that she hardly knows what is happening until it  _ is _ . It isn’t so much a vision as understanding conferred to the most basic part of her being. This place was full of life once. The entire surface of Jakku was vibrant and moving with living things. There was a river at the bottom of Kelvin Ravine, and lakes dotted the valleys. The Goazon was a sea of mineral-rich earth knitted through with trees, brush, and more flowers than she knows how to name. So much green, more than she has ever seen in her travels. Every atom of what once was is revealed to her in splendor.

Now, all of it is reduced to a single hum of life hidden at the center of the world, dense as a neutron star. Waiting. Quiet. Steadfast. The warm thrum inside her answers, desperate to touch it and be fed, until she feels as if her heart might explode.

Without thinking, she invites it all inside of herself instead. 

_ Be with me _ .  _ All of you.  _

She reaches out and opens herself up: the cracks the dark wanted to find, the cracks where the light slips through when she needs it most. 

_ Everything you have. Everything I have. _

She senses the life where it hides and she welcomes it. The Force surges around her and spreads like water into the sand, the shattered floor, down into the tunnel.

_ Take what you need. Please.  _

The feeling reaches its peak. Something catches, and then it’s being coaxed out of her. It doesn’t hurt. It isn’t hers. It belongs to everything. There is pressure, a sensation of being condensed and urged to float outward, but she stays where she is and lets the current pull, take, and give back. She’s the conductor of all that power, unchanged and sustained by the Force. 

Rey has very little memory of what death is like, but what she can recall will never leave her. It was dark studded with light bright as stars, and it was light flecked with dark like scattered bits of black desert glass. It was peaceful but in an empty way that held little satisfaction, a place for waiting, not staying. Afloat in the Force and all of this planet’s suspended life, she is reminded of that. Being dead and on the cusp of what comes next, and she is not alone.

_ Be with me. _

☉

When she opens her eyes, the suns have set, and the desert is cold as it ever is at night. She doesn’t remember closing her eyes, falling asleep, or losing consciousness, and she has no idea how she got outside. Though she is sprawled on her side, face resting on the ground and teeth chattering, the surface beneath her cheek is not the gritty slide of sand. It is smooth and cool, and it smells the way the breeze did on Lothal when she spent a few weeks there searching for the ruins of a destroyed Jedi temple. Still only half awake, she digs her fingers into the ground and finds damp soil.

There is grass underneath her, cradling her in a slight dip in the earth and blanketed with spiky nightbloomers and flowers she doesn’t recognize. Even in the weak moonlight, she sees that it stretches outward several yards in all directions before tapering off into the sand. She trembles with unease and tries to sit up, but she feels as drained and stiff as she would if she’d sprinted a distance and failed to hydrate. Her alarm redoubles when she stretches out to try again and realizes there is a body beside her.

That gives her the rush of adrenaline she needs to roll away and turn, her hand primed to reach for her lightsaber if necessary. She freezes when her eyes settle on it. 

A man is lying there on his side, his back to her. He’s naked and curled in on himself a bit, his skin impossibly pale, and though she can’t see his face, his posture gives the impression of deep sleep. His back rises and falls minutely every few seconds. She still feels an echo of unlikely heat where his spine rested against hers moments ago. 

There are so many things she wants to do she can’t process any of them. To say that she is experiencing relief or happiness would not be enough. In fact, to her shame, the first thing she feels, just for an instant, is doubt. This can’t be. She’s dreaming, or the dark has visited her where she fell and slipped a cruel vision into her mind’s eye while she was vulnerable. But she feels the resurgence of the bond between them, and that’s it—the doubt is dispelled by a high tide of elation and the tears that spring to her eyes even as her voice remains caught in her throat.

Her hand shakes when she reaches out to touch him. She lets her fingers brush the back of his shoulder. He’s intensely warm, though not feverish, and his body shivers at the hint of contact. 

“Ben?” She flattens her palm against his shoulder blade, relishing the subtle movement of his back as he breathes. It’s real;  _ he’s _ real. A giddy laugh escapes her mouth when she tries to speak again, and it bubbles into a hiccup as she begins to cry. “It is you.”

Belatedly, she rips her bag open and removes the cloak she had tucked inside. When she left the  _ Wayfinder _ she assumed she would need some warmer layers if her task kept her out into the night, though the reasons she needs the cloak now are none she would have dared imagine. Ben remains heavy and motionless when she wraps it awkwardly around him, though it’s hardly enough to make much difference. She needs to get him someplace warm. 

Only one option presents itself immediately, and she can’t believe she’s heading back to her old homestead even as she’s strapping him into the  _ Wayfinder  _ (she built it to seat two, though she could never consciously rationalize why until now, when it becomes so obvious she feels like an idiot). His head lolls against the back of the seat, and there’s awareness in his sleeping face that wasn’t there when she used the Force to carefully lift him inside. She steals one last look at the impossible sprawl of plantlife crawling up out of the observatory ruins and over the sand—she swears, it’s covering even more land now than it was when she woke—climbs into the pilot seat, and takes off to spirit them across the desert. 

Though it has been two years since she last saw it, the  _ Hellhound Two  _ appears undisturbed. The door and some spots along the ports show evidence of tampering, but it seems her security measures held long enough that any potential interlopers lost interest and left it to rust. Once she has it open, she gets Ben inside and lays him out in the hammock, then tucks the cloak and her old blanket tightly over him (though she can do nothing about the way his feet stick out one end) and sets to rummaging. She had a hoard of salvaged clothing before. She never discriminated by type, size, or color; anything could be cut down and repurposed to fit her needs. Right now, her needs are his.

Soon enough she’s found a shirt and a pair of trousers that should be suitable, though when it comes to what to do with them, she balks. Standing over Ben’s prone form, she’s hit with the stillness of the moment. Ever since waking up on Plaintive Hand, she’s been moving and doing what needs to be done. She hasn’t had time to ask how or why. 

Now, they’re just . . . here. Together. She never thought she would see him again, though too often she swore she could feel him. She doesn’t know what to think.

A few new tears well and escape as she smooths his hair back from his forehead and sets the clothing aside. He can dress when he wakes, or she can help him. For now, she’ll see if there’s anything useful left over. The place is cold and dark as a tomb, and she tries to get the generator running but realizes she’ll need to make a few repairs first. Every so often, as she brings necessities from her ship or pokes through drawers and compartments, trying to lose herself in memory, Ben stirs or makes a sound. Rey wants nothing more than to wake him up, except she senses he needs to come out of it himself. She senses, too, his growing awareness of her and of the fact that something has changed. 

Still, it’s torturous to force herself to remain calm and wait. Over the next hour, she finds herself crying and laughing by turns, or pacing the interior with no real aim, expecting  _ this _ to be the moment she wakes up alone on a bedroll or a bunk with only an ache in her chest for company. She goes outside to get some fresh air, then decides the stale smell of the AT-AT is preferable. Sleep is no more an option than letting Ben out of her sight. She talks to herself intermittently, though she’s really talking to him; because every time she has talked to herself in the last year, she has really been talking to him.

She is hunched over the busted generator, trying to determine the quickest fix, when he jolts and sits up with seemingly as much trouble as she had out on the plateau. Throwing her spanner aside, she rushes to his side. His eyes are bright and wide when he looks at her.

“What is this?” he demands, breathing hard through his mouth, voice thick.

Rey can perceive the writhing tangle of his emotions so acutely it feels like something winding its way over her skin. He’s stunned and confused, but there is a strong thread of awed curiosity as well that is so like the man she wanted to know she almost starts to cry again. She can’t fathom offering him anything other than the truth.

“I don’t know.” 

“Where—” His eyes slide over the room, and it’s clear he has no idea where he is. “Is it real? Are you . . . ?”

“Yes.”

When he looks at her again, he’s centered. The disbelief is gone. He shifts and runs his fingers along the edge of the blanket as if he’s just noticed it, but it hardly matters when the next thing he does is pull her into him. She was already moving to hug him and practically falls against his chest, setting the hammock rocking. They both chuckle, and then she can’t stop herself, even if the angle is terrible and she’s almost definitely going to tip him out of the thing—she shakes with uncontrolled laughter and sobs of relief, and he does too, their bodies suspended against one another as they embrace, holding steady. 

☉

They’re huddled on the floor a little later, sharing the blanket and a pot of instant soup she scrounged up. She can tell already they are both going to need more than she can provide here. The clothing she found for him fits well enough, though he has no shoes, and while she’s tempted to offer him his shirt from Exegol, the one she mended and couldn’t bear to discard, it can wait. He probably doesn’t want to think of that. Yet when he tells her the last thing he remembers of that day—not the brokenness of his body or the feeling of his life leaving it but the warmth of her smile—she wonders if she could be wrong.

“It was . . .” 

His attention drifts and catches in threads of recollection.

“What?” she prompts.

“It was like being bathed in starlight.” The timbre of his voice and the way he catches her eye make her beam. He returns it instantly, sidelong. It is so open, so unguarded and freed of burden. She can’t believe how easy it is for him and that she’s being given the gift of seeing it again. “Yeah, just like that.”

Rey is pretty sure she’s cried all she can now, and while she has no shortage of smiles for him, her expression turns somber. To say everything she wants to say to him would take days. She starts with the thing she feels most.

“I’ve missed you so much. Every single day. I thought what we did would’ve been the start. That we would be together. It was what I wanted more than anything.” 

He remains silent, and his smile melts away so slowly she’s able to memorize each beautiful crinkle, crease, and curve of it in reverse. As he lets the spoon they’ve been using rest against the side of the dish, it seems to her that he’s recalling something through a fog.

“We were together,” he murmurs.

The words chill her, and he draws his arm tighter around her shoulders until she’s tucked against his side. The solidity of his body is such a definitive barrier to any doubts or fears she might still have about what is happening; she could fall asleep like this if given the chance.

“ _ Be with me.  _ You used to say that.” His mouth curves, just the hint of a smile this time as he lets his forehead rest against hers and adds in a teasing, rumbling undertone, “So bossy.”

Surprised by his levity, she gives a good-humored groan and squeezes her eyes shut until she senses the shift in his mood. He’s serious again, just like that.

“I _was_ , Rey. I was with you.” He presses a hand over her heart, palm flat against her breastbone. The gesture is perfectly familiar, tender, and reverent. She wonders if he can feel the way her heartbeat leaps in response. “I don’t know how to explain it. But you took me with you. We were still one in the Force.”

Rey thinks of the things she has said to him all this time, meaningful and mundane, intimate, embarrassing, heartfelt, unrestrained. She remembers the nights she didn’t sleep, the bouts of frustration and anger at being left alone in a way no amount of human company can fix, the guilt she felt at how it made her sound ungrateful for what he gave her. 

She lays her hands over his and rubs lightly, finally able to admit it.

“I . . . I knew. I was afraid to let myself believe it, but I could feel you too, if I reached deep enough. I thought it was all I would get.”

She hadn’t wanted to lie to herself ever again. She had wanted to let the past be what it was; he’d taught her to do that, so she could honor him that way at least. She told herself she could accept and move on but not forget. But no matter how she tried, she couldn’t stop needing him or feeling the connection between them, dormant but unbroken. 

For once, her stubborn refusal to let go has not been in vain. Ben Solo has come back for her. On Exegol, on Jakku, on every plane the Force is at work, it will always, always be him. Shaking, she abandons any plans to finish eating and wraps around him, face buried in his neck. His hair and skin are so soft, and he smells so good—not even  _ clean _ , but green and alive, fresh and new. 

“I couldn’t see you,” she mutters. “I couldn’t hear you, or touch you, or—”

“You can now.” 

She shakes her head hard, forehead knocking against his chin. “I don’t want to stop.”

“So don’t.” He slides a hand down her back in a soothing gesture, a reminder of not being alone as his fingers curl beneath the hem of her shirt and his nails glance her skin as if testing her reaction—as if he needs to. His lips quirk again, his eyes sly and knowing but just uncertain enough that she’s charmed by the contradiction. “Be with me.”

How many times has she told him she loves him over the last year, thinking she was speaking to a memory? Has she robbed herself of the chance to do it for the first time to his face? 

Looking at him now, feeling him at last, she doesn’t think so. He already knows it as much as she does. In the handful of moments they did have before, they said a world’s worth to each other. Love was the heart of it then; there are so many ways she can say it again now. Too many to count or name. Each one is a star, and she wants to discover them all with him. 

They can start with this: a slow kiss that deepens until they have to break to draw a breath; that breath held as they wait, inches apart, for the other to stay and not be taken this time; the moment when they resume with renewed resolve and he begins to lay back and takes her with him onto the floor. She feels more alive than she’s ever been and more at home than she ever felt in this place.

She doesn’t consciously decide to start shedding layers of clothing. One moment she and Ben are still kissing, still touching. Each instance of contact is as gentle as the one before, even as they grow bolder, more grasping, and more open. The next, she’s shrugging her jacket off and the light sweater beneath it. She’s helping him out of his shirt while he eagerly tugs her pants down her hips. They’re both fumbling with the closure of his trousers as he puffs another precious laugh against the crown of her head. When she’s down to her basics, she lets him strip those off her too, she lets him pull her hair loose from the tangled remnants of a plait. It feels right to be this close, with nothing but their bodies between them. 

That’s the moment they pause, just to breathe and look. Settled over his thighs, Rey watches his face and knows he’s seeing her in a new way, even though he’s the one person who has always seen her as she is. She sees him too—his short gasping breaths, the fervid spark of his gaze, the goosebumps rising on his arms, every deferred desire swept up in willing vulnerability. Her eyes track over his face to his shoulder, down his chest, fixing on each spot that once bore a scar. She remembers them too well. 

Now she traces the unmarred skin with her lips and fingers, treasuring every hurt already healed. His hands follow the lines of her body to memorize it just as he has the rest of her.  Minutes pass in a surge of mouths seeking skin, limbs inelegantly trying to find purchase or placement in the space, and faltering, smiling apologies for a bumped chin or nipped lip or trapping of an arm.  With each caress, breath, and taste, they awaken together.

It was impossible that she would ever want to come back to this place, but she has. It was impossible that she could ever be this happy on Jakku, but she is. It was impossible she could ever see Ben again, but he’s here. He is alive, whole, and himself. 

Nothing is impossible. 

She draws her arms around his neck and pulls him close to capture his lips as he cradles the back of her head with one large hand, fingers tangled in her hair. Slowly he eases her back, his body heavy over hers, until she feels him everywhere—inside and out and in the fabric of the Force—and the air around them warms in the trembling heat of their return to each other. 

☉

Sunrise is lazy. There are shy slants of it coming in through dusty viewports overhead. Rey stirs slightly, enough to make the hammock creak as she stretches a leg and lifts her face from where she’s had it tucked against the side of Ben’s neck all night. It was a good night—the best she’s ever had—and part of her wishes she could relive it. Still half-asleep, she smiles at the memory of Ben’s eyes and lips, his hands and body, the sounds she drew from him, the sensuality of exploration and discovery, the things they experienced together for the first time. 

But that was just one night; they’ll have many more after this. She knows that now.

She’s speculating about what the next might hold when his hand cups the side of her face, fingers idly toying with the wispy hairs near her ear. Distracted from memories and daydreams, Rey cracks an eye open and finds him watching her. Though his expression is still that of someone just waking, she has never seen him look so rested or content. He wears it well, this looseness that suggests it’s the most natural thing that he should be happy.

“Good morning,” he says quietly, right against her lips.

“It is, isn’t it?” 

The cold of night hasn’t dispelled yet—it won’t for another hour or so, when the sun has fully breached the horizon—so she tugs the blanket higher and snuggles closer, though the hammock has not left much room to begin with. Already she is in love with the feeling of his skin and the slow thud of his heart against hers. 

He begins to yawn and mumbles through it, “You look like you slept well.”

“A bit too well. Though I’m in no rush to get up.” For once she doesn’t feel the dutiful compulsion to get up and move, work, do. This is peace. Rey bites her lip and grins playfully at him. “We could do with a bit more rest, you know? You were very . . . thorough.”

Ben snorts a laugh, jostling her body with his. “I’ll take that as a good thing.”

“You really should. Let’s see if we can outdo ourselves next time?”

“Oh, a challenge. I like our odds.”

They stay there until the room warms, enjoying the sensation of being by the other’s side, then rise to locate clothing and something to eat. As she hands off a few packets of rations, she looks at him seriously from her perch on her old work table.

“I was thinking of heading to Naboo after this,” she says, trying to read his reaction before he articulates it. Observing the mobility and openness of his face is a small luxury she enjoys very much. “We could go somewhere else, though. Anywhere you wanted.”

“Naboo. That’s a pretty heavily populated planet.”

“Kind of the point.”

His expression falters. “Look, time may have passed, but people still know my face. The things I did for the First Order. I’ll still be—”

“Hated?”

“Yes. To put it mildly.”

This would have come up sooner or later—of course it has to be now, after a blissful night and a tranquil morning. What he does from here on could be complicated, and it won’t be easy. Of course, no one would care on a backwater world like Jakku; it could be a place to disappear. But it would also be a miserable existence and not one she wants to return to or wants for him. They both deserve better than obscurity.

“People know what you did on Exegol,” she says. “I’ve made sure of that. Everywhere I go. They know what you did. The galaxy knows Kylo Ren died and Ben Solo rose in his place to stand by my side against the emperor. That you gave everything you had.”

The fact that he looks genuinely surprised by the news breaks her heart, especially after how easily he believed he would be reviled. But then he smirks. 

“When you say it like that, it sounds like all this dying and rising is starting to become a habit of mine.” 

She indulges a chuckle but refuses to let him derail her from her point. “They know who you are.”

“No, they don’t. They know a story, but they don’t know me. That’s just for you.”

“Ben . . .”

“And I don’t care what people know about what I did or didn’t do. Who I am or was. I just cared that you did. I could die happy, knowing that I was the person whose hand you wanted to take.” 

“Did you?”

“Yes.” He draws a shaky breath. “And I’m happy to have been given . . . this. My life back, however it happened. But I don’t know how to live it. I don’t know where to begin.”

“Neither did I. I’m learning, though. So will you.” She reaches for his hand and pulls him closer, searching his eyes. “We’ll do it together. There’s so much I want to show you. And there’s time to do the good you always would have done if things had been different. I’ll help you.”

“You told me that once. Before I was ready to listen.”

“Are you ready now?” 

“I— Yes. I want to be. But—” 

He pauses, eyes caught on something over her shoulder, his brows knitting slowly closer, mouth still poised at the edge of his next words. 

Rey squeezes his arm and gives it a shake. “What?”

“Were those there last night?”

He’s pointing at the same spot, and she cranes her neck to see. It takes a moment to process. There are thin, curling vines all around the sealed door, as if they spent the night wriggling their way through the minute gaps and are pausing for a rest. The longer she stares, the more she sees. A clump of leaves press against the viewport over the broken-down generator. One of the vent covers is half-obscured by more vines, thicker and lined with thorns, that have seemingly wormed in from outside. Even some of the floor panels have tiny, almost invisible shoots squeezing stubbornly between them.

She expels a quiet breath of surprise.

“No. They weren’t.” She hops down from the desk and moves closer with him just behind. “There haven’t been plants anywhere near this spot in . . . ever. Never in my memory. Nothing like these. Not anywhere on Jakku.”

“So what the hell is this?” His tone is brusque, but his face reveals avid interest, excitement at being faced with something unexpected and strange. “Something from the  _ Wayfinder _ ?”

“Why would I have plants on my ship?”

“I don’t know, maybe you took up hyperspace gardening or something.”

“Is that a thing?”

“No idea,” he mutters absently, already heading toward the control panel to open up the hatch that leads outside.

“Well, it’s a nice thought, but I’ve been far too—” 

Flashes of yesterday’s miracle at the observatory flicker in her mind’s eye: the call of the life essence, its desperation to be redirected and given a chance to make things new, the tentative spread of grass and flowers where before there had been only sand and the burnt-out husk of the observatory. She halts by the vent, stunned. 

“Ben, it wasn’t just you.” 

He’s distracted but listening as the hatch screeches open with rust and disuse. “What do you mean?”

“I found something,” she tries to explain. “It’s why I came. Jakku was calling me back for months, and when I found the observatory . . . there’s a power there. It just felt like life. I reached out to it and it flowed through me and . . .”

“You need to see this.”

In the open entryway, he’s silhouetted against the rich oranges and yellows of dawn, looking out. His posture is primed and alert as she draws up beside him, and her jaw drops in wonder. It’s like the observatory as she left it but multiplied several times over. A mess of tentative flora have sprung up all around the AT-AT, and though much of the land is still bare sand, patches of it have become dark, rich soil. 

“Come with me,” she urges him, and leads him around the side of the  _ Hellhound Two  _ to scramble onto the top of it.

From the higher vantage point, there’s evidence of the same as far as she can see: rolling dunes of scrubby, determined green mottled with sand and stone. On the horizon, she can swear she sees the gathering clouds of a rainstorm—the last time she remembers it raining on Jakku, she was fourteen years old. The air holds less of the dry heat it did yesterday.

Her perception of the life essence flares. It’s everywhere now, being fed by the Force all on its own, sustained in a vibrant cycle. This sort of growth is not possible. Yet she’s looking at it, and so is Ben. Jakku is coming back to life at a rate nothing short of supernatural.

_ The dyad bond. A power like life itself. _

“This is incredible,” he says, tearing his eyes from it to fix the same wonder-filled gaze on her. “You’re incredible.”

“I don’t think I can claim credit for any of this, but—” 

She’s unable to further defer his praise because suddenly he’s holding her face and kissing her hard enough that she starts to bend backward before he pulls away. Surprised and breathless, she can only look back at him. He grips both of her hands in his. 

“Don’t you feel it? When you reach out, it’s . . .”

“Incredible?” she supplies, raising an eyebrow. 

“I just came back twelve hours ago—forgive me if my vocabulary isn’t up to par yet.” 

She snickers, but she’s following him into it too, sinking just far enough away from herself to sense what the Force is doing. And he’s right. It  _ is  _ incredible, so powerful and overwhelming that her mood and senses soar out of her control until she remembers to pull herself back. No wonder he was so suddenly giddy. It’s the purest high she’s ever felt. He’s still holding one of her hands loose at their sides as her blood pounds and adrenaline begins to fade. 

“I think this is what I came here for,” she says quietly. “To find what was almost lost. One last thing.”

She can hear the soft sound of rain in the distance, and those are definitely storm clouds approaching. Ben stares at them with unconcealed eagerness. 

“So you still want to go?”

“Yes.” Rey nods stiffly and imagines what Jakku will be like in a week, a month, a year. The changes still to come. It’s a happy thought, but she feels no need to witness it. Her part is done. “This isn’t home anymore.”

He considers, rocking back on his heels, digging his bare feet into the sand. “Then we’ll go. To Naboo, or wherever. Maybe there are other worlds like this. We could . . .”

“Make them right?” she suggests.

“It might be a way to start living again.”

The sky clouds over to dull sunrise pink, and the rain starts as a gentle patter. It tickles her nose and ears, beads on his eyelashes, leaves tiny dark spots on the ground at their feet. In another few seconds, it’ll be falling in earnest. Rey squeezes his hand and lets him wind his fingers through hers as she holds it to her chest. 

“So let’s start. We’ve waited long enough.”

**Author's Note:**

> This story contains some oblique references to things we learn about Jakku, its history, and the Empire's/Palpatine's interest in it at the end of the OT Galactic Civil War in Chuck Wendig's Aftermath Trilogy. It was one of my favorite things about those books, and I highly recommend giving them a shot if it interests you too!


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